Financing for Green Infrastructure Investment

Financing for Green Infrastructure Investment

Now that 175 countries have signed up to last December’s ground-breaking Paris Agreement on climate change, the focus has switched to how pay for the implementation of the accords.

Multilateral Development Banks like the EBRD have been identified as key players in raising the finance needed to help combat climate change and more broadly to deliver the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were universally adopted in 2015.

The MDBs are seen as ideally placed to translate the billions of dollars already dedicated to development assistance into the trillions that are required by the new development agenda, especially via the mobilisation and leveraging of private sources of finance.

An event at the EBRD on 10 May, just ahead of the Bank’s 25th Annual Meeting, looks how to finance Green Infrastructure Investment, bringing together two of the key SDGs: The call for urgent action to combat climate change and to deliver resilient infrastructure.

Green infrastructure is a crucial element in the EBRD region’s transition story, helping to lay the foundations for economic growth while promoting resource, energy, and carbon efficiency and reducing harmful impacts on the environment.

It has become increasingly clear that public funding alone will come nowhere close to covering the immense infrastructure investment requirements, estimated globally at US$ 5 trillion per year in order to support a world population seen growing to around 9 billion people by 2030 and at US$ 350 to 400 billion a year for the EBRD region alone.

The event will start with an introduction from EBRD President Sir Suma Chakrabarti followed by a keynote speech from UNEP’s Simon Zadek, entitled Bringing Environmental Standards into Financial Industry. Simon Zadek is Co-Director of the UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System

Discussion at the meeting will focus initially on how best to tap into new sources of finance and to attract investment into the Green agenda from Sovereign Wealth Funds and from the insurance and pensions industry.

Speakers will also assess the development of the Green Bond Market and what needs to be done especially on the regulatory front to help its further expansion.

A second session will analyse the development of roadmaps for sustainable financing in individual countries and offers the opportunity to hear the experiences from several different countries from both the developed and the developing world.

The event is a chance to hear the views of practitioners in the Green Infrastructure arena, from investors and experts to government officials and policy makers, providing a financial, regulatory, and technical overview of a topic that is so important to the emerging economies the EBRD serves.

The event agenda can be found here. More information is available here.